


Marching Three by Three

by theleaveswant



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: F/M, Family, M/M, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-28
Updated: 2011-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-15 04:38:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theleaveswant/pseuds/theleaveswant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three truths about the polyamorous V-relationship Jake Jensen\Cougar/Jo Jensen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marching Three by Three

**Author's Note:**

  * For [katemonkey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katemonkey/gifts).



> Per katemonkey's "Dear Writer" letter: "Jensen loves Cougar. Cougar loves Jensen. Cougar also loves Jensen's sister. Jensen's sister loves Cougar. Jensen and his sister love each other, but in the way that siblings do, where they insult each other and got into the worst fights ever as kids and both of them have standing agreements with Cougar that if he hurts either of them, the other will fucking end him." A hasty sketch of a somewhat exceptional poly relationship for the 2011 Ante Up Scramble.

1\. It's awkward.

The logistics are a nightmare, for one thing. Jake will offer to help Jo set up some new spyware protection on her computer, and they will both look at their calendars for a time. Jake will propose Tuesday evening, because he's taking Lindsey to her swimming lesson Monday evening. Jo will say Tuesday is no good because she has a date with Cougar that night, and Jake will cover his ears and hum, and Jo will laugh and swat him on the arm and say that she _can't_ be talking TMI because it hasn't happened yet, but if it goes the way she _wants_ it to . . . and Jake will roll his eyes and throw an orange jelly bean at her and suggest Wednesday instead, and okay maybe that isn't a logistical problem so much as it is Jake and Jo's shared tendency to get distracted by shiny things like baiting one another. Still, the arrangement makes scheduling kind of a Chore.

It was another flavour of awkward when Lindsey confronted Jake in the kitchen one morning while they were making pancakes together and asked him if Uncle Cougar was his boyfriend, and he said yes and grinned like a loon because applying _that_ word to _that_ person still made him kind of giddy, and then she asked how it was possible for Cougar to be his boyfriend and Mum's boyfriend at the same time, and did that mean that Jake was Mum's boyfriend too? Jake wiped up the spilled flour and stammered helplessly for a moment, before taking a deep breath and explaining that no, just because Cougar was both of their boyfriend, that did not make him Mum's boyfriend too. He told her about the word polyamory, and how lots of people had never heard of it and some who had said that it was bad (and not because of the word's mixed Greek and Latin roots), but all it really meant was that some people loved more than one person at once, and all the loving people agreed that this was okay. Kind of like how she loved him and Mum and Cougar all at the same time, he said, except in a boyfriend-girlfriend (or boyfriend-boyfriend or girlfriend-girlfriend or other applicable identifier) kind of way, but that usually none of the people involved were related like he and Mum were. Did that make sense? Lindsey nodded slowly, her face scrunched up as she processed this, then asked if they could put blueberries in the pancakes. The pancakes were delicious, and Jensen upheld his principle of free access to information for everyone, but he wondered whether he ought to have saved the conversation until she was a little more discreet.

2\. It's inefficient.

Cougar tries not to think about how much extra water he's used since this whole thing started. Showers are the most obvious reminder; he's taking a lot more of them now than he's used to because neither Jake nor Jo are comfortable smelling the other on him. As okay as they are with things consciously, they don't like the hindbrain-rattling reminder, the implication that they might be screwing each other, if only transitively. Cougar respects that, and avoids sharing scented hygiene products with either one for the same reason. Smell-related and sanitizing water consumption doesn't end there, either: he's also changing and washing his clothes more often, and the sheets on his bed, and the towels. Not to mention washing and sterilizing the few toys he keeps for multiple partner use—which, come to think of it, there are a lot of things that dating Jake and Jo at the same time leads Cougar to buy, use, or throw away more of now than he's used to besides water. Safer sex supplies, obviously. Toiletries, because he has to keep a duplicate set at their house. Food, because he spends enough time cooking or dining out with one or the other that leftovers tend to go off before he gets around to finishing them. His whole apartment, really, rent and everything in it, because while Jo is happy to have Jake living under her roof and taking care of Lindsey with her, neither of them are entirely copacetic with the proposition of crowding all their respective relationships into such cramped quarters.

Time, too, is a complicated issue. None of the time that he spends with either or both of them is ever 'wasted', exactly. It's just parcelling out his time between them and his own needs for privacy and quiet (neither of which he gets much of when any of the Jensens is around) reminds him of how little he might have, and the paranoid desire this cultivates in him to spend every moment in the best possible way is bloody exhausting.

3\. It's worth it.

This situation is not unlike having cake and eating it too, Jo thinks as she rests her head on Cougar's thigh, and he rests his on Jake's shoulder, and Jake plants a kiss on top of her daughter's head, and they all laugh as the bumbling clown tries to imitate the unicycle-riding juggler who appeared earlier in the basin of the drained skating rink, all sprawled out on a blanket under a tree at the circus arts showcase in the park one sunny Farmer's Market afternoon. It's supposed to be a logical fallacy, an impossibility. It's supposed to be as sweetly pathetic as the wretch in the red nose and the shabby tailcoat, aspiring after an unreachable star. As a single mother she is supposed to choose between her sex life and her family, her punishment for failing to 'keep' her man. She is not supposed to share her lover, least of all _with_ her family. But, Jo decides, as the four of them join the other Sunday spectators in chanting magic words to encourage the clown, who is finally able to bring her teetering unicycle under control, 'supposed to' doesn't hold much water any more. Jake and Cougar were supposed to be in the army, until they were supposed to be dead at the hands of some sneaky evil people who may or may not secretly rule the world. Breaking into applause as the grinning clown catches the rainbow bowling pins her audience volunteer tosses up to her, Jo laughs in the face of 'supposed to'. The pins twirl through the air in a blur of color; the shabby duckling turns into a swan, as scripted, glowing under the adoration of the crowd, but Jo doesn't care about the script anymore. What she has now is better.


End file.
